GOODBIDS Brand Identity Product Design

A visionary genius has a wild idea and puts together a small team of ruckus makers to make it happen. Soon, they have an MVP ready for testing. Initial signals are encouraging. They dig in for a few more months to turn the MVP into an actual product. The official launch is a success, and they lived happily ever after.

This is the story of GOODBIDS, except for the “happily ever after” because real life is always more complicated than that, and GOODBIDS, despite its successful launch, is currently on hiatus as we prepare for our next steps forward.

The visionary in this story is Seth Godin. I’ve had the honor of working with him and the rest of the GOODBIDS team in the past on the Carbon Almanac, a never-before-attempted, global, volunteer-based editorial project on the most pressing issue of our time—but I digress.

When he talked to me about GOODBIDS the first time, he had already started riffing with my friend and engineer extraordinaire Jasper Chroome, and now they felt the need for someone with an eye for design to make the product beautiful. I said I could help with that, and off we went!

The goal of GOODBIDS was to turn charity auctions upside down and inside out with a simple tweak to traditional auction mechanics: in a GOODBIDS auction, every bid is a non-refundable donation to the nonprofit hosting the auction. Our success hinged on the out-of-this-world generosity of those who would resonate with the idea. To celebrate that generosity, we created a mascot—Gibby—to support a brand identity that’s energetic, fun, and approachable by combining timeless typography and modern color themes. Gibby is ever-present across all applications as it lives in the GOODBIDS icon, a stylization of its big eye and friendly smile.

Although the GOODBIDS web app is similar in structure to traditional online auction platforms, we didn’t want to play it too safely. We wanted the product to stand out and make a lasting impression. So, we let it ooze character through its light green background and the exaggerated softness of the UI elements, reinforcing the brand’s friendly and modern character.

GOODBIDS allows non-profits to customize their auction sites according to their brand identity. One of the product design challenges was creating an auction site theme that could be customized intuitively by a non-technical person with the tweak of a few simple settings.